


Mishpachah

by friedgalaxies



Series: snitches get stitches [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Adoption, Disabled Character, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jewish Character, Jewish Suna no Sankyoudai | Sand Siblings, Sand Siblings-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:28:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29411955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies
Summary: mish·pa·chah | \ mə̇shˈpäḵə, -pȯḵə \: a Jewish family or social unit including close and distant relatives.orGaara is eleven years old. He is not gentle, or soft-hearted, or kind. But for the first time in his short life, he is being treated as though he is.
Relationships: Baki & Suna no Sankyoudai | Sand Siblings, Gaara & Kankurou & Temari
Series: snitches get stitches [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1846960
Kudos: 12





	Mishpachah

**Author's Note:**

> yet another sand siblings (and baki) focused work from yours truly :> i will say right off the bat, that gaara in this universe is part of a two-alter system in which he is host, and shukaku is a persecutor alter. this is written with my own personal experience of systems and alters, but if anyone has any issue with what ive written in reference to gaara's system please comment!

Gaara is eleven years old. He is short, and thin, and barely fits into the clothes bought a size too big on purpose. His eyes are wide and a soft impasse between green and blue, the only soft thing about him, ringed in raccoon-dark circles that stretch half an inch down his face. His ribs stick out when he exhales and his bony wrists poke out at the ends of too-long sleeves. His thin, long fingers look even longer and thinner with the blue-green veins running like rivers inked deep into a map along the backs of his hands, along his chest and neck and just barely visible in the meat of his skinny forearms when he rarely rolls a sleeve up, only under the threat of inescapable heat. He is not gentle, or soft-hearted, or kind. He is angry and scared and hidden, hidden beneath so many layers of denial and regret and lies.

There’s an angry red scar on the left side of his forehead, a deeper red, even, than the short puffs of ginger curls he wears in a near buzzcut, barely brushed, washed just enough to escape the threat of being tugged by his ear to the kitchen sink and having his scalp scrubbed till it stings. There’s an angry red scar on the left side of his forehead, nearly a month old but still fresh where he pick pick picks at it with stubby fingernails, always with old, dark blood crusted underneath them. There’s an angry red scar on the left side of his forehead in the best approximation of the Japanese kanji for “love” a shaking hand can accomplish with the dull edge of an eyebrow razor in the few minutes before someone storms into the bathroom to see him with blood dripping down his face and mania in a grin that isn’t his.

Gaara is eleven years old and he lives in a house that is too big, echoes too much, with too sharp corners and too bright lights. He is eleven years old and he has a brother and a sister and a Father, and occasionally tutors and housekeepers that come to putter around with their too loud voices and keep things in order. He lives in a big house that is empty during the day with only him inside of it, and the oppressive weight of fear and guilt suffusing through the empty hallways till it fills the whole house in a noxious cloud, prying at the locked windows in vain.

Gaara is eleven years old and there’s a strange man with a funny set of scars on his face standing on his porch, big and white and wrap around with a set of old, antiquated rocking chairs and a welcome mat that never seems to see much use. Gaara is eleven years old and there’s a strange man standing on his porch, speaking in clipped tones with his father, just loud enough to hear but not loud enough to make out the words where Gaara and his brother and sister sit crouched at the edge of Temari’s window, straining to see over the veranda.

Gaara is eleven years old and that same strange man with the funny scars on his face that almost look like whiskers, creases set deep into the brown of his skin, is climbing the stairs to their rooms with big black garbage bags in hand like the kind they use on trash day. For a moment a voice in the hollow at the back of Gaara’s skull scratches out a frantic tattoo against the bone, saying that _it’s your time, brat. someone’s finally come to kill you after all._ and Gaara wonders how far the jump from the window to the ground is and if it’ll shatter his ankles bad enough that he won’t be able to run away.

But then the man is handing them the garbage bags and telling them to grab whatever’s most important to them, telling them they only have the one bag to fill and they better hurry, and Gaara is hardly inclined to believe strangers when everything his Father has ever told him has been that strangers will hurt him worse than any punishment ever would but the shouting outside is getting louder and anxiety is buzzing in Gaara’s chest like a horde of wasps. He worries that the wasps will come shooting out of his mouth if he tries to talk so he runs to his room, not even having to fumble with a knob because there’s no doors on any of the rooms in this house anyway, only in the doorways to Father’s bedroom and his study. The bathrooms don’t even have doors, just curtains on silver rods hung up with shiny silver rings that make Gaara’s ears hurt when they’re pulled closed.

Gaara is eleven and he’s stuffing clothes into the black garbage bag a strange man has just handed him. There’s not much else that he owns, aside from the bear that he’s had since birth with its missing eye and ribbon round its neck worn threadbare and shiny from countless hours spent rubbing it between the pads of thin, shaking fingers. He tucks the bear under his arm and gently, so gently, with more care than he’s even taken in his entire life, wraps the framed photo of his Mother and Uncle in one of his thicker sweaters so as to protect it. Yashamaru’s face smiles up at him, so achingly familiar it hurts deep in his skinny chest, and for a moment Yashamaru’s face is pale and spattered in blood and his mouth is moving and saying words that Gaara never thought he’d hear in his entire life, much less from Yashamaru of all people--

But then he blinks and it’s gone.

Gaara is eleven and he and his siblings are being put into foster care.

Gaara is eleven and his social worker’s name is Baki. He’s Muslim, which he cared to share with the three of them after spotting the Magen David necklace Temari rubs at with her thumb when she’s nervous but keeps tucked under her shirt otherwise. Temari had seemed to trust him a little more after that, but that hardly says much, because Temari’s trust is a hard won game that Gaara isn’t even sure how to play at.

Gaara is twelve and he and his siblings are moving foster homes because the last one simply could not put up with the three of them, could not put up with Gaara’s fear of blood and the way the smell of iron made him shake and how for hours he would retreat into the back of his own mind only for a raging, spitting monster to take his place with fire in borrowed eyes and a screaming, whipping tongue in a borrowed mouth.

_Look at how these people are afraid of you, child! They’ll never love you._

But Baki hadn’t wanted to split them up, even as little as Gaara knows his siblings trust him, so Gaara is twelve and they’re being moved into Baki’s personal apartment. Baki’s apartment is small. That’s the first thing that strikes Gaara about the space, other than how soft and dark it is. Their home with their Father had never been dark and soft like this, with too big windows full of too bright light and empty doorways and threats lurking in the creak of floorboards under a grown man’s weight.

Baki’s apartment is small, and dark, and soft. The front door opens directly into the kitchen, which leads into the living room, the walls of both of which are painted in a soft, sandy maroon. There’s a pair of leather couches covered in so many afghans that the leather is hardly visible beneath, angled just slightly towards the little television with a dark wooden coffee table between all of them. The wooden floors are covered in rugs, intricate and beautiful but worn soft by the passing of many feet.

_Nothing sharp to mark your ugly little mug up with, hm. Pity._

There are paintings and tapestries on the walls, the likes of which Gaara has never seen before, and glass nazarene hung up over the breakfast nook that serves as a tentative separation between kitchen and living room. There’s a hamsa hanging by the door and Temari gasps when she sees it, immediately reaches for the Magen David underneath the collar of her shirt. Gaara knows Kankuro wears a similar necklace, but he’s never been so attached to their Mother’s religion as Temari, who had known her the longest.

Deep in Temari’s bag, there is a picture of the three of them with their Mother at shul; an infant Gaara held in their Mother’s arms, a frowning toddler Kankuro held at the hip of one of the older men, and a toddler Temari clutching at her mother’s long skirts. The adults are grinning, heads thrown back in laughter and pink in their cheeks.

Deep in Kankuro’s heart, there is a worry, that this, too, will be used against them and taken from them, like the way pictures and memories of their Mother were held over their collective heads, a threat of lost memories, of not even a snatch of that fleeting happiness that Kankuro can almost taste if he remembers hard enough. It’s safer to not get too close, to not even pretend like he cares, and if he tries hard enough then this, too, won’t be taken from him.

Baki’s apartment is small and the bedrooms are smaller. Just three of them, so someone will have to double up, which is not a concept Gaara is used to even with their Father’s house with all of its empty doorways and sharp corners. Baki is showing them around, at the little rooms with their little beds and empty bookshelves ready to be filled, with their soft curtains that block out just enough light for the warm orange of the afternoon to come in all fuzzy and drowsy along the sandy maroon walls.

“There aren’t enough rooms for all of us to have one, sorry,” Baki is already saying, hanging his bag up on a hook by the door and fixing them all with a look. Gaara has learned that Baki does not emote easily, which is a trait the two of them share, but there’s a certain softness in his lack of expression. He does not hold it at them like a loaded gun, like a finger on the trigger of an explosion, like he’s making them play a game without revealing the rules and punishing them when they get it wrong. He simply does not make many facial expressions, which Gaara can understand, because his body language is much more open than his face ever will be, Gaara thinks.

“Temari gets to have her own room, because she’s the oldest.” Baki is saying through the noise of Temari’s cheers. The corner of his mouth hooks up in a just-barely-there smile. “So, either the two of you can share a room, or Gaara can bunk with me.”

“Why Gaara specifically?” Kankuro is asking, nose wrinkled, even though Gaara knows he’s going to opt for rooming alone, out of fear of the nightmares that send Gaara into gasping, full body sobs that wrack his thin frame like a tornado wrenching a deserted house from its foundations near every night.

“Because he’s the youngest, and the smallest, and I’m almost certain you don’t want to share a room with me, Kankuro.” There’s a bit of a teasing lilt to Baki’s voice, and Gaara isn’t the best at picking it up, but he’s pretty sure the man is pushing Kankuro’s buttons on purpose. Not to make him mad, but just for fun.

That’s still an unfamiliar concept, of doing things just because they’re fun, instead of with an ultimate goal in mind. Gaara is so used to playing his entire life out like a long-form game of chess he almost doesn’t know what to do with all these pawns in his hands and nowhere to put them.

“Room with Baki, then, Gaara.” Kankuro says, with the kind of finality one uses when they’re the only party involved in the making of a decision. Gaara simply shrugs, because there’s nothing much to say.

He had a tutor ask him, once, why he didn’t care to speak, and did he not know how rude that was, and a million other things Gaara frankly hadn’t been paying attention to. When the tutor finished, standing, red-faced with a hand braced on the perfect essays Gaara had just turned in, Gaara had simply said that there was nothing important to say.

That tutor did not come back.

The afternoon has dripped into evening which has dripped into night, and Gaara has just changed into his pajamas. Baki had taken the time to ask what kind of sheets Gaara liked, and had even put them on the little twin-size trundle bed he pulled out from underneath his own. They were flannel, soft and a little worn, like everything else in Baki’s home. Gaara curled up into himself like he did every night, a thin blanket overtop him and a thin pillow underneath him, stuffed bear tucked in the crook of his arm.

“Baki?” Gaara asks, because he isn’t sure how else to start a conversation, and rolls over preemptively to escape the lecture on making eye contact when speaking with someone that is sure to follow but Baki merely raises an eyebrow from where he’s reading a book, glasses perched low on his wide nose.

“Yes, Gaara?” Baki says instead when no question follows, setting his book down in his lap with his finger as a place marker. Gaara can’t read the cover from here, but it’s probably something about dealing with damaged children like one might deal with damaged goods.

“I have nightmares.” Gaara says.

“I’m aware. Is there anything I can do to help you with them?”

Gaara falls silent for a moment, because in all of his short life no one has taken the time to answer the fact of his nightmares with a question like that. The word itself, “help”, so short it’s just one syllable, feels alien in Gaara’s mouth where he turns it over with his tongue like poking at the space of a missing tooth just for the taste of copper.

Baki doesn’t press, doesn’t rush, simply waits for his answer, which is another alien concept.

“I… do not know.” Gaara says instead, because he really doesn’t, not as a first-time answer to a first-time question. Baki looks at him, really looks at him, and sets about finding a proper place mark for his book on his slightly cluttered bedside table.

“May I ask you some questions about them?”

“Yes.”

Gaara is expected to be questioned on the quality of his nightmares, or perhaps the content, so his wide, seafoam eyes widen in shock when Baki simply asks, “Are you scared of the dark?”

“Huh?” Gaara says, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

“Are you afraid of the dark, Gaara? Because if so, I could leave the light on.”

“No, I… I am not afraid of the dark. They are not about the dark.” There’s an uncomfortable pit beginning to twist like it's full of writhing snakes in Gaara’s gut, and he clutches his bear ever tighter.

“May I ask what they’re about?”

“My uncle.”

“What about your uncle?”

And perhaps Baki is expecting an answer like he hurt Gaara, or touched him inappropriately, or even yelled at him like those angry fathers on the TV shows their last foster mother liked to watch in the evening, always the ones perpetrating heinous crimes against children that the fictional police officers had to solve, so perhaps that’s why his mouth looks like it’s going to fall open in shock when

Gaara says, “I saw him die.”

“I’m very sorry about that, Gaara.”

“It is okay.” Gaara says, because that’s what he’s been told to say when people offer meaningless platitudes about his Uncle’s death, though it’s been a long time since anyone has said anything of that flavor to him. Everyone supposed he was too small to remember what happened, he guessed.

_Yashamaru is on the phone in the other room and there’s something on the kitchen counter that Gaara wants but he’s too short to reach, something that seems nebulous and blurry-edged but still so very appealing in this facsimile of memory. The little stool Yashamaru uses to get glasses down from the high cabinets is nowhere to be seen so Gaara drags a chair over and clambers onto it, reaching for that nebulous, appealing Something on the counter. Except he slips on the polished wood of the chair and grabs for the closest thing and it’s the knife block, the magnetic one, and there’s yelling and everything is happening so fast and suddenly Yashamaru is on the floor and he’s bleeding. There’s blood everywhere and there’s a knife in his wrist, sunk down deeper than Gaara has ever seen a knife go to the point where there’s hardly even any blade showing and Yashamaru is hurt but he’s smiling._

_He’s smiling and he looked over at Gaara with that soft, nebulous expression, something distant and pleased. Yashamaru is still smiling when he says, “Gaara, don’t come any closer, okay?”_

_And Gaara was six so he nodded a frantic yes and hunkered down onto the floor where he stands, watching the blood slowly pool and seep across the previously spotless off-white tile till it nearly reached his socked feet. The phone is still on in the other room and Gaara thought about running to grab it, because Yashamaru has always taught him to call 911 when scary things like this happen but_

_Gaara can’t move he can hardly breathe his eyes are blurring with tears and Yashamaru is still smiling and_

_And Yashamaru said, “Your mother never loved you. Your mother never loved you. Your mother never loved you.”_

_And its repeating, repeating, repeating like a broken record, like an endless, looping song in Gaara’s head and Yashamaru is still smiling and_

And Gaara awakes with a scream, rocketing up from his borrowed bed so fast his head spins. His mouth tastes like copper and all he can smell is iron, metal, thick and noxious in his mouth in his nose his throat his lungs his lungs are full of blood, full of blood and he’s sick and--

And suddenly the lights are on and there’s a warm presence by his side.

And suddenly the lights are on and Gaara’s not alone.

Baki doesn’t speak, simply loops an arm around Gaara’s whisper thin shoulders and waits, waits for the shaking to simmer into a whisper of steam that rolls off Gaara’s shivering frame and filters out into the cool air of the night through the open window. The curtains, thin and made of some kind of silk, maybe, flutter in the breeze. Gaara times his breaths to the fluttering of the curtains, of the gentle push and pull, to the point where when he takes a deep enough breath he can imagine he’s sucking all the air out of the room and pushing it back out through his nose again. His skin feels thin and oversensitive but Baki’s arm around his shoulders is heavy and warm.

For the first time in a long time, Gaara falls back asleep after a nightmare.

**Author's Note:**

> hey! thanks so much for reading, this has been something sitting in my drafts forever and i decided to finally post it because of my extreme love of the sand siblings, and baki, and their relationship to each other. this is part of a modern au i've created with my friend that i'm attempting to extrapolate more on as time goes on, let me know if you'd like to read more about it! as always, comments, concrit, and questions are always appreciated <3


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